MUMBAI, 7 April 2020: With India government further imposing restrictions for palm oil imports moving it to restricted list, refined palm oil imports have recorded a drop of over 90% in March 2020.
The industry body, Solvent Extractors’ Association of India (SEA) in a statement said that the fall was due to Indian government moved RBD Palmolein under the restricted list with effect from January 8, 2020.
The imports of RBD Palmolein fell 90% in March 2020 to 30,850 tonnes, from the previous-year period’s 312,673 tonnes.
For the period November 2019 to March 2020, the imports were 66% less YoY, SEA said in a statement.
In a report compiled and released by it based on the interim provisional data on edible oil imports in March, SEA noted that the nationwide lockdown made it unable to collate data from all sources.
SEA noted, “The imports of CPO and CPKO also registered a 12 % dip during the November 2019 to March 2020 period. This decline in the imports of palm products has directly benefited the imports of soft oils such as soyabean and sunflower, which is evident by their increase in imports by 22 per cent and 17 per cent, respectively.”
Soyabean and sunflower imports in March 2020 were at 292,410 tonnes and 2,96,501 tonnes respectively, almost similar to March 2019.
Based on the available data, SEA said there was a 32% dip in overall imports of edible oils at 941,219 tonnes, compared to 1,391,255 tonnes in March 2019.
“The overall import of edible oils during November 2019 to March 2020 is reported at 5,391,807 tonnes, as compared to 6,005,067 tonnes during the same period in the previous year, i.e. down by 10%,” it added.